Ports & Infrastructure

Alaska at a Glance

Alaska’s unique transportation challenges and future

Various ways to ship goods

• steamship and barge
• truck
• rail
• air service
• rollagons — huge vehicles capable of traversing the tundra
• hovercrafts

Fact

Alaska’s land mass is approximately one-third the size of the Lower 48 states. The population is 700,000, of which 500,000 live on a narrow belt serviced by rail between Seward and Fairbanks.

Port expansion

There is no warehousing in Alaska, so shipping can’t be stopped during construction. The expansion is being performed with zero impact to operations. Duplicate operations are being established to the north and south for seamless operations.

2010 target

• Three wider cranes on site and operational
• Relocation of container operations (ro/ro and lo/lo)
• Two public barge terminals
• 60 acres of review service
• Final preparations to demolish portion of old dock

Transportation comes a long way in 25 years

“Twenty-five years ago Alaskans would say, ‘I couldn’t get a head of lettuce because it wasn’t in the grocery store. The barge must have been late.’ But today they are just like other American consumers,” says John Parrott, vice president of communications at TOTE. “They couldn’t tell you where the heads of lettuce come from, but they know there are fresh ones on the shelf in Fairbanks every day of the week.”

“Alaska makes a great [transportation] model, because she’s a very unique and isolated situation,” says Parrott. And it’s a good model because of its challenges — supply chain management, intermodal issues, freight mobility and short sea shipping, among others.
But Parrott says even though the state is far away and has limited infrastructure, harsh weather and a small population, the challenges of serving Alaska have been overcome. “Due to those improvements in the infrastructure, we’re been able to attract the same types of retail services that the customers in the Lower 48 have. We have shrunk that supply chain, and in [the retailers] minds it’s no different than if their stores were located in Northern Washington.”

Doing it all

“To be in Alaska you have to be all things to everybody,” says Linda Leary, president of Carlisle Transport Systems. “You’re not JUST a motor carrier, but you also have to use the services of all the other modes. We also offer heavy haul services, truckload LTL, bulk commodities — anything and everything — because the market is so small. To work in Alaska, you have to be a little bit of everything.”

Facts you may not know about the Port of Anchorage

• It provides 90% of goods to 80% of the population — excluding only Southeast.

• The port is designated by the Dept. of Defense as one of 16 “National Strategic Ports.”

• It provides 100% of the jet fuel to Elmendorf AFB and 80% to Ted Stevens International Airport.

• It stages 100% of the exports of refined petroleum products from the state’s largest refinery in Fairbanks and facilitates petroleum deliveries from refiners on the Kenai Peninsula and in Valdez.

• The port offers the only active Foreign Trade Zone services presently available in Alaska.

• It became operational in September 1961. Ironically, it was Alaska’s greatest natural disaster three years later that made the port the dominant marine facility in the state. The 1964 Alaska earthquake, and the tsunami which it generated, destroyed the two ports that served Southcentral Alaska at that time. The Port of Anchorage, on the other hand, suffered only minor damage and was operational again within days. Consequently, all of the materials shipped to Alaska to rebuild the state came through the Anchorage facility.